2020 . . . what more do I need to say? Right? We went to bed after Labor Day knowing that a storm was on its way and that strong winds were possible. We were not expecting the extent of what we woke up to Tuesday morning (September 8th), though. It really felt like a hurricane (minus the rain). First of all, I slept horribly all night because I could hear the wind blowing and the sticks falling on the roof. At some point there were a couple claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. But mostly wind. Then, around 5:30 am we heard a pop like a firework outside. The power flickered, but came back. About 10 minutes later we heard another loud sound close by and everything went silent and black. And stayed that way. For days. But we'll get to that part later. First, let's check out the damage:
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| 6:47 am - getting light enough to see what's down. We are used to sticks and branches falling in our yard even in the slightest breeze, so I was not surprised to see the deck looking like this. In fact, it didn't look so bad, really. |
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| 7:31 am - we were snuggled in the big room, watching the wind and counting the branches we watched fall when we heard a sound like a garbage truck going down the road. Only it was coming from behind our house. I turned around and saw the big barn in the back (not on our property, but right next to it) collapse! |
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| We needed to warm up (the temperature dropped from 90ish Monday to the 40s Tuesday morning) and luckily we could do so with some hot cider and cocoa! We were SO grateful for our gas range during all of this! |
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| Ready for an adventure! |
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| 10:16 am - calm enough to venture out to see what we can see. I see lots of sticks on the ground but I also see a downed power line across our yard/driveway. Womp, womp. |
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| Pretty much every tree lost something. |
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| That poor barn! |
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| It is such a bummer! |
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| One of our skinny weed trees in the back tipped over on the neighbor's fence. |
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| Note the size of that stick pile (that has been here since the beginning of our time here - we just add to it every time the wind blows). |
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| Front deck carpet. |
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| And now the big mess! Somewhere under that is the driveway (and power line). Ai yai yai! |
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| 11:57 am - Gregg got brave and wandered round the front to see damage from that angle. Some pretty big limbs, but luckily the whole trees stayed standing. A line we kept repeating through all this was: it could be so much worse! |
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| She likes to snap pics of her #playdohcreations (and has even started hashtagging them when she posts them to the family websites), but this was a surprise to find as I was scrolling through my photos later. Ha. She makes me smile. |
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| Sam wanted to document his cool designs, too. |
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| 3:48 pm - Gregg was already on clean up mode; he worked so hard getting things raked up and hauled to the back pile! (I didn't mean to take this pic, but I'm kind of glad I have it.) |
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| 3:49 pm - my first time seeing the mess of the driveway from this side. (note Gregg had picked up the garbage cans, but we left everything else alone since a downed line should always be treated as dangerous. |
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| 4:10 pm - the primary was having a drive-by back-to-school treat pick up at the park but we obviously couldn't drive by. Luckily we could still get the bikes out and the kids were so excited to get their cookies and bendy pencils from the presidency. |
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| Quite a few branches down at the park - but no whole trees down here, either, thank goodness. |
Our neighbor Mike came by a couple times through the day/evening to offer help moving the branches on the driveway. We kept saying we thought we should wait since they were tangled in a line. Around 5:00 pm we had our hopes climb when we saw a crew of Rocky Mountain Power workers pull up in front of our house. They walked around and looked and flipped off the power connection to our line. And then left. A little while later, Mike came back saying his power was back! No luck for us. But he did tell us that the power was off in the line on our driveway, so he'd be back to help pull the huge branches with his four wheeler. That was such a help! They were big logs that would have taken us hours to saw enough to move. We were able to clear the driveway in just a few minutes, making it easier for the workers to reattach the line should they come by.
By this time in the evening we were feeling a little frustrated with the power company for lack of info - Mike was telling us things that he heard from the workers he saw at Maverik having a coffee break. Why didn't they say something to us? Why when we called to tell them our line was clear were they not more helpful with info? But after sitting with it for a day, it made a lot more sense. We had a huge mess and it would have taken them a while. They were dealing with thousands of customers without power and were looking for the quickest fixes with biggest payoffs. Clearly our one house of four people was low down on the priority list. As it should be. Once we thought about it, the frustration fizzled and we just settled into our groove.
Sometime in the late afternoon, Gregg's parents in West Haven got their power back on and they offered to share their generator with us. They brought it to us right as the kids were heading to bed and we immediately plugged in the fridge and our computers and devices. That became our routine every few hours for the next few days. Power up the generator, plug in the phone/computer/fitbit, let the fridge cool down. Then turn it off for a while.
We learned quite a bit about keeping a fridge cool through this. We rigged up our outdoor thermometer sensor to be inside the fridge instead of outside our window. We used that to monitor the temp without having to open the door, because we also learned that opening the door, even to just grab the milk for a couple seconds, we lost a couple degrees worth of cold air that quick! We had a half a bag of ice in the freezer that we moved over to the fridge along with all our frozen water bottles that we use in our cooler. And we cranked the temperature setting way down in the fridge, so when it did get to run, it got down to almost 32 degrees. Then, with the ice filling up the empty spaces, and keeping the door closed, it could stay pretty cool for a long time without the generator having to run.
Still, we were constantly flipping light switches every time we walked into a dark room, and looking at the clock on the stove or microwave, which were of course not working. Cal kept wanting to bake yummy things, which would have been perfect since it was so cold, but while our stove was still usable, the oven was not. One day I suggested making nachos for lunch, but Sam had to remind me that the microwave wasn't working. Cal complained about it being too quiet to fall asleep, having no white noise from the fan to help her block out the conversations and thumps and bumps down the hall. We made it work, and we really could have had it much worse (I saw someone on Facebook say they are on well water and their pump didn't work without electricity - we still had water and even hot water! We showered one evening by light of flashlight!)
Wednesday, September 9th:
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| I knew the facebook meme makers and sharers would come through for me - and when I logged in on Wednesday morning I was not disappointed. Ha! |
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| Our charging station of power. The priorities for us were our phones and laptops and battery packs and of course the fridge, but we did branch out to the tv one evening to watch the RSL game and hooked up the garbage disposal in the sink a couple times when it wouldn't drain. :) |
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| On Wednesday afternoon, Gregg held up the line so we could drive out of the garage and make a much-needed visit to the library (these were our returns!). We also spent an hour at the park and it was heaven to sit in the sun and feel some warmth. |
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| 3:02 pm - we got home from the library and the park and she was immediately settled in her spot and blew threw a stack of Heidi Heckelbecks (which she has already read many times before, but they're like comfort food for her). |
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| 3:02 pm - Cal isn't the only bookworm in the family. Sam had a stack he was looking through and waiting for me to read to him while I got a few things done. |
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| 5:47 pm - a bit of improvement if I do say so myself! |
Thursday, September 10th:
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| Getting more tangled, I think. |
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| Back and forth and back and forth - got lots of steps in hauling sticks to the backyard pile. |
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| What pile? Oh, just this ginormous pile! (Gregg did all the heavy lifting, but there were plenty of smaller sticks to go around for all of us.) |
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| The pile was big before, but this storm really made it grow! |
Friday, September 11th:
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| Gregg did some McGyvering to keep the cord up so we could get in and out of the garage more easily. It worked like a charm! |
Since it was Sam's birthday, we headed to Ogden to play for a few hours in the morning and through lunch. While we were eating our burgers, I decided to check the outage map and noticed that the dot representing our house was missing. We got our hopes up that they had come by while were were gone and fixed things. I decided to try the texting number to see if the status on that had changed. The message I got back was confusing: it said "your outage has been reported" as if it hadn't been reported yet. I was worried that it had been fixed and removed and then I had inadvertently re-reported an outage that wasn't real. We hurried home and discovered that the line was still balancing on the pole on the ladder and we were still powerless. So who knows what happened to our outage report? Weird. So we continue to wait. And rake. And haul branch piles to the back.
Around 3:30, Gregg and the kids were geared up and heading out on a bike ride when they noticed a RMP truck drive by and look at our situation. Gregg waved to them and asked if they were here to fix our line. They replied that they didn't have it on their orders, but it didn't look like it would be too hard to fix, so they pulled over and got to work. (They had their list of jobs printed out that morning and we weren't on it then, so we were lucky they happened to noticed our predicament and stop. And thank goodness we had things cleaned up, or they probably would have kept driving!) About a half an hour later we were back in business with lights and fridge and garbage disposal! A birthday miracle! (Sam even said it was his favorite part of his birthday.)
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| So happy! |
We survived! 4 days (something like 82 hours if I counted right?) without power. And it really helped us realize that those modern day "conveniences" truly are just that: convenient. But not necessary. I'm not gonna lie, I'm so glad things are back to normal. But it was kind of a fun adventure and made for a good blog post anyway. ;)
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